Jason Campbell is the Prototype

Thirty years from now, I sincerely hope that Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is looked upon as one of the greatest albums in American music history, as it contains one of the most beautiful songs ever written about the vagueness and uncertainty of love in Andre 3000’s “Prototype.”

And if you hear acoustic guitar riffs over your morning coffee and headlines this morning, don’t be alarmed. It’s just the soundtrack to the Washington Redskins’ scandalous flirtation with a trade for Jay Cutler, resolved by the franchise and its fans being collectively in love again with quarterback Jason Campbell.

In the eyes of many fans, the Skins would’ve been lucky to get Jay Cutler. He could easily be viewed as a quarterback built to go out and win games rather than not losing them.

But there is something to Jason Campbell’s size, his ability to make plays when necessary, and the still huge potential he has in year two of the Jim Zorn era—the first year Campbell will have played under the same offensive coordinator for more than a season since middle school, it seems.

And if the Redskins happen to fall in 2009, no one is more poised than Campbell to accept responsibility for the failure. It won’t be Zorn and his eccentricities, it won’t be Clinton Portis and his sensitivities.

It will be Campbell stepping up to say, “I stayed, I didn’t get it done.”

Campbell has the size, the intellect and the demeanor to be a productive quarterback in a system that relies heavily on timing and accuracy. A look at the numbers between he and Cutler couldn’t definitively distinguish otherwise.

You could question is reluctance to make certain split-second decisions every dropback, but considering the newness of the system and the anxiety of Zorn as a first-time coordinator, and you get how last year became a web of confusion. That likely won’t be the case this season.

The city has embraced him, and are now genuinely sympathetic to his cause and his resolve. Campbell believes the team doesn’t want him, and it’s possible that this may be the year he displays how much the team needs him.

He should be on a plane to Denver right now, but he stayed for a reason.

I think the Redskins are on the right track now.

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